Updates about Olive Tree Genealogy website and other FREE genealogy records. Bringing you tutorials, genealogy book and app reviews, genealogy news, genealogy specials and more. Helping you find your family tree and ancestors.

January 22, 2013

MEGA is Here - 50 GB Free Cloud Storage

I've discovered MEGA. MEGA is a new free cloud storage service based in New Zealand. I signed up yesterday and today I am happily uploading files into my 50 gigabytes of storage space. Yep, you heard me right. 50 GB. Free.

From the MEGA website "We are a dedicated group of technologists who were given the time,
opportunity and Internet access to build an awesome cloud storage
service that will help protect your privacy. We have programmed this
Internet service from scratch in Auckland, New Zealand. Unlike most of
our competitors, we use a state of the art browser based encryption
technology where you, not us, control the keys."

This is very interesting because that is exactly what MEGA does. You register and create an Encryption Key. That's kind of like a password. The difference with an Encryption Key is that NO one but YOU knows what it is. MEGA doesn't know. Their programmers and staff don't know. That's the good part because it means there is no way for hackers or anyone else to see your stuff.

The caveat is that if you lose your Encryption Key you have lost all your files too. Because no one but you can get them ---- as long as you have your key.

50 GB of free cloud storage is pretty awesome but there's even more. A Pro Membership will buy you up to 4TB of storage. Yep for $29.99 a month you can have 4 TB of storage. $19.99 gets you 2TB and $9.99 provides you with 500GB.

That's impressive.

One tip - take their advice and log in with Chrome. I ignored the popup explaining that Chrome would give me a better experience and logged in with Firefox. I couldn't get my files to upload so I switched to Chrome and they uploaded very quickly.

I was worried because living where I do with limited access to high speed Internet, I have what is commonly referred to as "last resort Internet service" (a 4G Satellite service) . I wasn't sure if the speeds would be high enough to allow me access to MEGA. But so far so good.

You may find it a bit sluggish since it seems everyone is jumping to sign up. If you do just be patient and wait a few days for the initial rush to die down. I'm pretty happy about having yet another spot to store my genealogy files but I'll still be uploading directly from my iPhone to Dropbox since MEGA doesn't (yet) have that capability. Credits: Image by scottchan at Free Digital PhotosThanks to Dick Eastman of EOGN for his blog post alerting me to MEGA

3 comments:

I would highly recommend CrashPlan+. I've backed up 37GB on it already but there is no limit. The unlimited services does cost $3.96 to $5.99 per month depending on how long of a contract you are willing to commit to, but that is what a lot of people pay for a cup on fancy coffee : )

When it comes to something as important as backups it makes me really nervous to trust a complete free service. Is this business model going to be sustainable? Sure you could always switch backup companies but re-uploading tens or even hundreds of gigabytes of data would take a very long time, especially over 4G.

BTW, I'm not affiliated or employed by CrashPlan in any way. Just a happy customer that has hundreds of gigabytes of digitized family history related data to protect.

You might want to check out the history of Megaupload's founder before you entrust too much data there. Kim Dotcom, as he calls himself, was the subject of a dawn raid and arrest last year. I wouldn't trust my backup to any site that he's involved with.

I'm an incurable collector of
antiques, an avid genealogist and a messy but creative cook! I blog, i write history and genealogy books. My main genealogy website is Olive Tree Genealogy http://olivetreegenealogy.com/

Disclaimer

Disclaimer: Sometimes I receive compensation if you buy something from one of the companies that advertise on my blog. Some companies simply pay me for advertising space on my blog. I am not paid to write about products or services. Sometimes authors or publishers send me a book to review. I get to keep the book but I write an honest review. RootsTech paid for my registration at the 2011 Conference in exchange for me blogging and tweeting about it but they did not tell me what to say.